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Business Line September 11, 2019 Almost one in every three internet users in India have encountered cyber attacks in the first quarter of the current fiscal, according to a report from K7 Computing, a Chennai-based cyber security solutions provider. According to its latest edition of the Cyber Threat Monitor (CTM), metros in South India such as Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad witnessed more cyber attacks than Tier-1 cities, according to a press statement from the company. Cyber Threat Monitor is a quarterly report which looks into the complex cybersecurity landscape in the country. It tracks all critical components of cybersecurity such as enterprise, mobile, Mac, Windows and Internet of Things (IoT), covering metros, Tier-1 and -2 regions. As per the report, Chennai recorded the highest percentage of cyber attacks among Tier 1 cities in the first quarter at 48 per cent followed by Kolkata with 41 per cent.  Delhi registered the lowest of cyber attacks with 28 ...

Business Line September 11, 2019 The amount of goods with preferential tariffs is the main source of trade dispute between India and China.  spat between the world’s most populous countries is holding up a pan-Asian trade agreement encompassing nearly a third of all global trade. Trade ministers from 16 Asia-Pacific countries this week hailed a critical milestone after seven years of talks and vowed to wind them up before a regional summit in November. But officials involved in the process say major sticking points remain around market access and the ability of workers to find employment in other countries. The main source of tension is between India and China over the number of goods with preferential tariffs, according to a person familiar with the negotiations who asked not to be identified. The person said India was also unhappy with the position of Southeast Asian countries on the free movement of professionals, particularly in the IT sector, and is weighing wh...

Hindustan Times September 12, 2019 Pakistan has submitted to the UNHRC a “joint statement” on the human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir which it said was supported by some 60 countries that it didn’t publicly identify, triggering questions about the backing for the move. The text of the statement was posted on the website of the Foreign Office after it was delivered to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday, but Pakistan did not identify the nations purportedly supporting it.  A member of the Pakistani delegation at the UNHRC in Geneva said a list of these countries would be handed over to the Indian delegation but people familiar with developments said this hadn’t happened. The people cited above said the statement reportedly had the backing of the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and Pakistan’s all-weather ally China.  However, diplomats from several OIC member states, such as Indonesia, distanced themselves from the move ...

Hindustan Times September 11, 2019 Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri called Wednesday on Muslims to attack U.S., European, Israeli and Russian targets in a speech on the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks online activity of jihadist groups, reported that in a video released by the militant group, the 68-year-old al-Zawahri also criticizes “backtrackers” from jihad, referring to former jihadis who changed their views in prison and called the 9/11 attacks unacceptable because innocent civilians were harmed. “If you want Jihad to be focused solely on military targets, the American military has presence all over the world, from the East to the West,” he said. “Your countries are littered with American bases, with all the infidels therein and the corruption they spread.”  The coordinated al-Qaida hijackings on Sept. 11, 2001 killed nearly 3,000 people, when airliners slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and a...

Dawn September 12, 2019 Based on Pakis­tan’s ‘effective’ progress report, the Asia-Pacific Joint Group (APG) will submit next month its assessment of Islamabad’s progress on strengthening of its systems against money laundering and terror financing. “The Pakistan delegation effectively presented Pakistan’s progress on each of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Action Plan items and provided additional information/clarification to the AP-Joint Group,” said a brief statement issued by the Ministry of Finance after two-day face-to-face meetings with the APG in Bangkok. It said the APG, as per the FATF’s procedures, would present its report in the FATF Plenary and Working Group meetings scheduled for October 13-18 in Paris, France. The FATF plenary will conclude if Pakistan has sufficiently delivered on its 10-point action plan committed at the highest level in June 2018 to fight money laundering and terror financing in order to qualify exit from the grey list or be giv...

Tribune September 12, 2019 The stock market extended gains on Wednesday on the back of positive expectations about the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) meeting currently under way in Bangkok.  Positive investor sentiment buoyed by higher international crude oil prices, progress on the FATF front, increase in urea prices and constitution of a stockbroker committee pushed the benchmark index upwards. Earlier, trading began on a positive note and the KSE-100 index rose steadily throughout the day. At midday, selling pressure emerged, which dragged the index down slightly, but late session buying wiped out all the losses and helped the index close just below the 31,000-point mark. At close, the benchmark KSE 100-share Index recorded an increase of 487.63 points, or 1.6%, to settle at 30,954.83 points.  JS Global analyst Maaz Mulla said the market had a bullish momentum throughout the day, during which it hit an intra-day high of 553 points and closed at 30,955, u...

The Hindu September 09, 2019 K allol Bhattacharjee Michelle Bachelet also asked India to ensure that the National Register of Citizens verification in Assam does not leave the people Stateless. The UN Human Rights Council urged India on Monday to end the lockdown in Kashmir and restore basic communications services.  Delivering the Opening Statement, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet noted the situation in Kashmir and Assam, where lakhs have been excluded from the National Register of Citizens, and asked the Indian government to respect civil rights. “I am deeply concerned about the impact of recent actions by the Government of India on the human rights of Kashmiris, including restrictions on internet communications and peaceful assembly, and the detention of local political leaders and activists,” said Ms. Bachelet, while addressing the 42nd Session of the Human Rights Council (HRC). India ended the special status for the State of Jamm...

The Hindu Dated: September 12, 2019 Mr. Netanyahu's controversial pledge involves extending Israel's sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea, which account for one-third of the West Bank, if he wins next week's elections. UN chief Antonio Guterres warned on Wednesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plan to annex a key part of the occupied West Bank would violate international law. "Such steps, if implemented, would constitute a serious violation of international law," Mr. Guterres' spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement. "They would be devastating to the potential of reviving negotiations and regional peace, while severely undermining the viability of the two-state solution," he said. Mr. Netanyahu's controversial pledge involves extending Israel's sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea, which account for one-third of the West Bank, if he wins next week's ...

Business Standard Dated: September 12, 2019 The domestic 10-year bond yields spiked following cues from the US bond market, where yields rose to a month’s high and oil prices firmed up. The domestic 10-year bond closed at 6.68 per cent, from its Monday’s close of 6.58 per cent. The market was closed on Tuesday due to a religious holiday. “The rise is due to overseas yields firming up, otherwise there is no fresh domestic factor,” said a senior bond trader. There was a little bit concern about the finance minister talking about lowering goods and services tax (GST) on automobiles, which could potentially push up borrowing here in the domestic market, said the dealer. However, the domestic mood was set by the movement in US bond yields. The 10-year US bond yield rose 7.4 basis points to 1.706 per cent, its highest since August 9. In the last two trading sessions bond yields in the US has risen 15 basis points. The 30-year bond yields also rose by a similar margin. ...

The Indian Express Dated: September 12, 2019 The Bimal Jalan Committee on Economic Capital Framework, in its report last month, noted that the RBI’s forex reserves in 2008 were higher than country’s external debt, a position which has reversed in 2019. After adopting a fresh Economic Capital Framework, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is working on putting in place a formal mechanism to assess the adequacy of its foreign exchange, or forex, reserves. This is important as India’s external liabilities have been higher than its forex reserves in recent years. An internal group of RBI is working on developing a framework to assess whether forex reserves are adequate. The panel is expected to study how much reserves are adequate to cover various risks. The Bimal Jalan Committee on Economic Capital Framework, in its report last month, noted that the RBI’s forex reserves in 2008 were higher than country’s external debt, a position which has reversed in 2019. The year 20...

Times of Islamadabad Dated: September 08, 2019 ISLAMABAD - Pakistan is likely to be removed from Financial Action Task Force Greylist, media reports have revealed. Pakistani delegation hold a face-to-face meeting with the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) Asia Pacific Group (APG) in Bangkok for a final evaluation of its anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) report. A big diplomatic victory of Pakistan against India at top World Body Talks will be held with the FATF from September 8-10. The team will submit replies to 125 questions of the APG, which had been summoned in order to take Pakistan out of the grey list. A session of cross-questioning would also be held during the talks between the two parties. Particular emphasises has been placed on measures the state has adopted and implemented for freezing the assets of banned organizations, curbing the financing of banned outfits and legislation for restricting money laundering....

DownToEarth Dated:    September 09,  2019 Genetically modified (GM) Bt cotton has failed in India and claims of its success is based on wrong data, claimed environmental experts.  The government has wrongly submitted to the Supreme Court and the  Union Ministry of Agriculture  have erroneously claimed in Parliament that Bt cotton is an ‘outstanding success’, said environmental acvtivists Aruna Rodrigues and Vandana Shiva, at a press conference on September 6, 2019. While yield in terms of kilogram/hectare is the true performance evaluator for Bt Cotton, the government has taken wrong data — the total national cotton production data, the activists said.  According to  data  from the the Union Ministry of Agriculture, the adoption of Bt cotton in India has increased the production of cotton to 34.89 million bales in 2017-18 from 8.62 million bales in 2002-03. “The one-sided official Bt cotton success narrati...

The Hindu Dated: September 10, 2019 Mr. Guterres’ report was written before U.S. President Donald Trump cancelled his secret peace talks. The Islamic State extremist group remains resilient in Afghanistan despite “a high pace” of operations against it by government and international forces — and is urging all armed groups not to interfere in the upcoming presidential election, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said The UN. chief said in a report to the Security Council circulated on Monday that between mid-June and early September 183 incidents were attributed to Islamic State fighters — nearly double the 93 incidents during the same period in 2018. Mr. Guterres’ report was written before U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly ended a nearly yearlong effort to reach a political settlement with the Taliban on Saturday. Mr. Trump said on Monday that US peace talks with the Taliban were now “dead.” In the report, the secretary-general says the US-Taliban ta...

The Hindu Dated: September 09, 2019 The trade body ruled that renewable energy incentives offered by U.S. were discriminatory In a welcome judgment for India, a World Trade Organization (WTO) panel in June accepted its claim in a dispute concerning U.S. regulations on domestic content requirement in the production of renewable energy. This was also significant as New Delhi had earlier lost a similar dispute over its own domestic content requirements. Though Washington has since challenged the ruling, in the light of the Donald Trump administration’s allegations against the WTO, it is important to discern the reasoning adopted by the organisation in reaching its conclusion. The dispute revolved around certain States in the U.S. that give incentives to local producers in the form of tax rebates, refunds and credits when they produce renewable energy using locally manufactured products. Article III of the WTO’s General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) requires that coun...

The Hindustan Times Dated:  September 10, 2019 Jack Ma is giving up the reins of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. after presiding over one of the most spectacular creations of wealth the world has ever seen. The former English teacher steps down as executive chairman of China’s largest company on his 55th birthday after amassing a $41.8 billion fortune -- a trove surpassed only by India’s Mukesh Ambani in Asia, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His record-breaking rise from a bootstrapped entrepreneur working out of his apartment in 1999 to jet-setting e-commerce mogul is one for the history books, mirroring China’s own evolution from technological backwater to world’s No. 2 economy. Over two decades, Ma and his co-founders built a business-to-business marketplace into a $460 billion titan that bested EBay Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., operates the one of the world’s largest cloud computing businesses, and runs a logistics network that delivers millions of parcel...

The Telegraph Dated: September 10, 2019 The automobile industry hit the skids in August with vehicle sales tumbling to a 22-year low — with still no sign that the Modi government is prepared to rummage through its toolkit of options to heave the industry out of a deep rut. Passenger vehicle sales plunged 31.57 per cent year-on-year to 196,524 units in August, falling for the 10th straight month, according to data released by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM). Car sales plunged 41.09 per cent to 115,957 units. More importantly, this now counts as the worst-ever fall in both the categories since the SIAM started recording data in 1997-98. Data showed sales of two-wheelers had declined 22.24 per cent to 1,514,196 units, while sales of medium and heavy commercial vehicles had plummeted 54.3 per cent to 15,573 units. Sales of total commercial vehicles, including light commercial vehicles and goods carriers, fell 38.7 per cent to 51,897 units. In the fir...